plus, i don't get any points for the ton of pics i have on here, methinks they should grandfather all my other pics in.

You have shattered my dreams of transcendence. DOH!

I'm not sure about referring to it as "karma" but most sites have ways of letting users know who the other high traffic users are. On Myspace there's the listing of most popular blogs, on Flickr there's the explore function, etc... None of them are quite the same and none of them really have any spiritual connotation.

I'm not sure calling it "judging" is accurate, I get the impression it's quantitative not qualitative. It's more like a "ranking of activity".

I can tell you this it's extremely easy to get "Karma" here (perhaps not so much so in real life) and I expect to see the "rankings" flip flop all over the place. It would be nice if content could be grandfathered, lots of people have put lots of work into the site already.

Perhaps someone from innovation and development can chime in and tell us what the thought process behind including the feature was.

i dont care about being judged, i just want that whitesnake tape!

I re-read the Karma FAQ and it's pretty informative about what's going on. It's too early IMHO to make any judgements. I look forward to seeing what happens once the "Karma Police" get on a roll.

It's really nice to have a new feature explained like that acctually. I kinda wish it as a little more predominant and personal. Like a post that said "Hey Introducing Karma, piping hot and fresh to the world. Here's what it's all about."

It appears there is indeed a qualitative judgement made on the awarding of karma points, but I'm curious if at this time it's something as simple as a word counter or quantity / diversity algorithm. If it is an algorithmic function that determines Karma you can be sure people we do their best to figure it out. There's been papers written on reverse engineering "interestingness" on Flickr.com

You can have the Whitesnake tape. I'll take the buddha statue from Pier 1.

It just seems to be too personal showing off that you have no "karma" when there is already a rating system called "popularity". This seems to be a good enough way to rate the users on this website. Not only is it optional for users to see who is the most popular on the website but it dosn't guilt you into making pointless blogs about nothing to raise your "karma". Yes, i was impressed with the fact of how well it was explained, however it could have been introduced better. I think they should stick to the "popularity" rating or make it optional to post your "karma" score to everyone that views your profile.

whoa! if they give a whitesnake tape for karma, what will they give for popularity!?

hey now! tim is this just a clever ploy to get karma points?

I gotta do what i gotta do! I need to get that karma!

The real trick will be to see if making pointless posts and comments actually gains you any benefit in the long term scheme of things. For all we know they could take away Karma for "Karma whoring" and posting comments to every profile you can find and writing "It's awesome!" for every bar.

Slippery eh. I can understand your reservations. It's my understanding there are great vast plans for this website and adding all sorts of amazing features. I'm sure some people will love them, some will not.

Cheers!

lmao! i think u, jammy and myself r the only ones on here, we can just keep posting stuff all night and build up points! whoa i just cracked the reverse engineering interestingness code!

I havn't received my karma points for the last couple of posts, where do i make a complaint to receive my karma?

I mean there is no way i will win this whitesnake tape with only 81 karma points!

Rub the Sacred Cow's belly and it will spit out a line number.

I'm sorry I find this all very funny :-D My mother and brother are Buddhists and I've been close to several Hindus. No offense intended to any creed.

lol offense is never taken with me my man!

..I'm still only at 81 karma points....

If you go to your profile and click on "Karmic Ledger" it will give you an run down of how your Karma has been awarded by the gods. It's kind of interesting.

Looks like Karma started to get computed on 12/14. It looks like a few things like having an Avatar and having a completed profile were grandfathered in, but photos and posts from before that point were not. Deleting a photo deducts the Karma you received from uploading that photo, but in my case it wasn't instant. The Karma deduction came after some other activity.

Wee fun, I can be geeky and analytical on Indy.com now!!!!

I do like the subtle threat- "Please remember .... that you can lose points for breaking the Indy.com Terms and Usage Guidelines"

G'night guys. Don't loose sleep over it :) We really need a smiley function.

Just a few quick notes:

1) This is a test run of the Karma system.

2) There will likely be a reward system for Karma points in early '08. Thus, Tim, you got it right when you said ... "Sure if it had any purpose such as incentives for having high karma, it might be thought of differently ..."

3) During the test run of the Karma system, the developers are looking to see how users might try to game the system (and writing rules that would make it more difficult to do so -- there are a few already in place.)

4) And, by the way, only you can see your own Karmic ledger.

Cheers.

It looks like Jammy got some Instant Karma.

Heck, I'm happy to be in the top 100...with 69 Karma points!! Love it! :-)

The first thing i thought of when i saw the karma points was http://www.getgoodkarma.org/ and some how it had to be tied in with that. But, reading into it more, "Karma" points turned out to be a way to rate members on how much activity they bring in to the website. I think they need to stick with the popularity to rate the members instead of posting how much activity they have with "karma" on their home profile page letting everyone know that they don't spend every waking moment on indy.com! Yes i do understand the whole concept and what they are trying to do and like i said earlier, it was nice of them to explain it so well. Let's just stick to the basics here and not turn off members by telling them they suck by not bringing in enough traffic to the website!

When I saw it I was sorta hoping I could redeem them for Records, black light posters, incense and T Shirts.

I'm content with my real Karma and will post when I've got something to say. Except for this time. And maybe once in a while when I've got the rare time to spare and feel the need for more love. Oh shoot, I guess I'll have to do more than just check in everyday to read and share my wisdom more often.

..it's no big news for me that I am one of the "losers", since my Karma points are so low( sniff,sniff,... nobody loves me !!just ain't that cool enough,...sigh), story of my life. But now that I'm a real grown up, it doesn't effect me anymore. My life is not a popularity contest anymore! Is just fuuuunnnnyy.